


all these moments

by bleebug



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, KnightRook
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-05 12:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12794238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleebug/pseuds/bleebug
Summary: (A collection of KnightRook drabbles, headcanons, and ficlets. Some were written pre-7x07 so they have some non-canon bits.)





	1. little pieces

**Author's Note:**

> some chapters have artwork attached. please do not edit or share them! the original works are on tumblr and a link is in the chapter descriptions.

His daughter, over the years, becomes – by far – the cleverest and most challenging opponent he’s ever had. One game can last for days at a time while they both carefully contemplate each move, filling the time with conversation and laughter, picking up where they left off the next time he manages to sneak in to see her.

He’s been a pirate, a scoundrel, for such a very long time. But not in her eyes. No, in her eyes, he’s a shining knight in a black leather duster. He knows this because she tells him one evening. She holds his captured white knight piece in her dainty fingers and says, “It’s you, Papa.”

“Is it, now?” His eyes light up with amusement. “And why is that, my dear?”

“The knight overcomes obstacles like no other piece can. He moves between the light and dark, and even though he’s meant to protect others, he’s still… he’s so  _free_. So it’s you, Papa. You’re my knight.”

It’s moments like these that he wonders if she knows just how much he loves her, what he’d be willing to do, to sacrifice, for her happiness.

“Well, love… if I’m a knight, which piece are you? The queen?” He doesn’t expect her frown. “No, not the queen,” he says quickly. “My daughter isn’t some stuffy royal.”

The comment earns him an almost-smile from her, enough to make those lovely dimples of hers appear. But she sighs and picks up her own black rook, twirling it between thumb and forefinger.

“This one maybe? It… it looks like my tower. My  _prison_. And I feel… I feel like nothing more than my cage sometimes. The rook is useless in the beginning, trapped,  _stuck_. It can’t move anywhere, just like me.”

Before he knows it, he’s reaching across the small table and engulfing her smaller hand in his, the rook piece trapped between their fingers.

“You’re forgetting, darling, just how resilient it is. The rook is one of the most powerful pieces on the board. You say the knight overcomes obstacles? Once those chains are broken, the rook can  _demolish_  those obstacles.” He raises his hook to her chin, affectionately nudging her face up. “I swear to you, someday we will find a way to get you out of here. And then we’ll go wherever you want.”

Those blue eyes that are so much like his own glass over, the soft reflection of candlelight flickering in the shine.

“You promise?”

He leans forward and kisses her knuckles, then drags her hand to his chest, holding it tight against his heart, pursing his lips and trying to will himself to become stronger, better.

“Aye, little rook, I promise.”

 

He isn’t proud of the fact that he never managed to keep that promise. It’s possible, he supposes, that somehow she could have escaped on her own after that bloody witch spirited her away. He hopes she did, and that she found freedom her own way.

The rook piece, he keeps tucked safely away in his coat, close to his heart. It may be a dark heart, poisoned and weak, but it’s hers, and it always will be.


	2. clever girl

Killian starts bringing games to give her something to smile about. In the beginning, he takes the obvious – cards and dice. The rules are simple, and a great deal of winning has to do with chance. Which is why she doesn’t like them. (Besides, “Papa, you cheat!” “I most certainly do not. I’m merely… increasing the challenge for you.”)

It isn’t until he lugs a chess set, a bit too large to really be trying to carry while sneaking in to see her, that things really start to change. Because there is no  _chance_  in this, no fates to decide the outcome. It’s all about strategy, about thinking several moves ahead, about knowing your opponent and carefully calculating what they’ll do next. It requires far more thought than any of those silly mindless tavern games that even a drunk could win on a good day.

Killian greatly underestimates his daughter’s brain, not to mention her attention span. Barely half his size and already able to outsmart him. Somehow he thinks, between the two of them, it’s far more likely she’ll figure out how to rescue  _herself_  before he’ll find a way to do so.


	3. cabin fever

Freedom is  _right there_ but she can’t reach it. She goes  _crazy_ when she has to wait for her father to return. She hates her room so much. She wants to break the walls, the ceiling, have all the bricks just fall apart, just for a  _taste_  of life outside. Killian tells her stories of far off lands, of sailing the open seas, of all the wonders of all the realms. And she  _needs_  it, to feel the salty air on her skin, to taste the ocean, to lay in the grass and swing from the vines in the trees, to meet people, and learn new things.

But all she has is a room and a dream. And her father, who wishes more than anything he could give her the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. uncle liam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please do not edit or share image. original can be found [here](https://bleebug.tumblr.com/post/167505958786/she-loves-to-learn-the-child-is-like-a)

She loves to learn. The child is like a sponge, soaking everything up – from fantastical fairy tales to droll historical nonfiction, even some war strategy knowledge he found on scrolls from his days in the Royal Navy. When that part of his own history is revealed, she asks so many questions and Killian struggles to answer them all. He worries more often than not that, should his entire past come to light, she’d never see him the same way again. But there are parts of his tale that he does wish her to know. It’s been close to a century since he pulled out his brother’s old journal; it was tucked away safe and secure, locked in the chest in the captain’s cabin. And now it’s in her hands, the spine delicately folded open, the pages imbued with a scent that brings back a thousand memories, and the familiar inky scrawl that could only ever belong to Liam Jones. He holds her in his arms as she begins reading, heartbroken to recall everything he’s lost, and more grateful than anything for what he’s gained.


	5. storyteller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please do not edit or share image. original can be found [here](https://bleebug.tumblr.com/post/167720561281/alice-is-an-excellent-reader-and-though)

 

Alice is an excellent reader, and though Killian makes a point of giving her as thorough an education as he possibly can all on his own, he can’t take all the credit; the girl is a natural. Brilliant. But just because she  _can_  read, doesn’t mean she doesn’t take every opportunity to goad her father into telling the stories. He changes his voice to give each character a unique sound, and gestures enthusiastically to help him along. She loves it all. Sometimes when she closes her eyes, it almost feels like all those fairy tale characters are right there in the room with her, and for a few moments, she’s not lonely anymore.


	6. strange man

Killian gets so busy taking care of baby Alice, changing and cleaning her, making daily trips to the nearest town to get supplies and rushing back, possibly hiring a wet nurse to come by several times a day for feeding (at least for the first year), keeping the home clean… that he starts to neglect his once immaculate personal grooming. His scruff grows into a fairly full beard, his hair grows longer, bangs falling over his eyes, the back tips falling past his collar.

After a few years, he finally decides he can’t stand it anymore. When he takes his trip to town, he makes a stop at an old barber shop. His hair is trimmed to perfection and for the first time in centuries, he gets a clean shave.

And when he returns home, little Alice makes the most ear piercing scream he’s ever heard, and he  _panics_. His first thought is that she’s seriously hurt herself, or someone has found the tower and invaded their home, but… no. It’s him. And he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry because she’s absolutely terrified –  _because she does not recognize him at all_.

It takes several long moments of crooning and trying to calm her down before she understands that he is, in fact, her papa. And though he makes a point of maintaining his scruff, he promises to never shave his face clean again.


	7. mother

Alice learns about “mothers” through the books they read. When she asks her papa if she has one, his features darken like she’s never seen before.

“Yes, little love, you have a mother. But, I’m sorry, she isn’t like the ones from the stories.”

She presses him for more answers and he hesitates. He doesn’t want to break her heart, but he can’t lie to her either. So he simply tells her a half-truth — that she was a bad woman, and she didn’t love her family because she didn’t know how to love at all. And, of course, that she left without looking back.

And when Alice goes quiet, more contemplative than sad, he thinks, he presses a kiss to her temple and begins to share memories of her namesake.

“Oh, but my mum, your grandmother, she would have loved you,” he tells her. He was young when she passed and it’s been several centuries since then, but he hasn’t forgotten. “She was so kind and caring. Used to sing to my brother and me, rock us back and forth in her arms when we were too restless to sleep.”

His daughter’s eyes light up, her attention hanging on every word, and he wishes — he  _wishes_ with every beat of his heart — that even without a mother, or her uncle, or her grandmother, now all long gone, that he is enough.


	8. plaits

Killian learned to plait when he was little. His mother's wild red curls would fall in front of her eyes over and over, until she’d finally relent, grab three messy chunks by her ear, and twist them in and out all the way across to the other side. It fascinated him, her beautiful crown of interwoven hair. Once she showed him how it was done, there was no stopping him. Until the day she passed, there were always several thin braids hiding amongst the tangle of ringlets; Killian’s handy work.

Years later, after he’d become a man through both age and experience, the opportunity came again. He’d spent many a time in a woman’s company, but those relationships were always entirely physical. Things were different with Milah. After a short time, it wasn’t enough just to have her body; he wanted her heart – in exchange for his, which she owned long before either could admit it aloud. So after sating their desires, holed up in their cabin aboard the Jolly Roger, he took to showing her affection in any way he possibly could. His lips would touch every freckle on her shoulders as he’d weave her dark locks together in a perfect plait, and she never questioned how he learned, or why he’d sometimes smile so serenely as he did so.

Alice’s hair isn’t curly and thick the way his mother or Milah’s was, but somehow the girl always manages to tangle it up, regardless of how often he brushes through it. He may be down five fingers, but he knows he’s still capable of braiding. But he doesn’t. He can’t. Delicately woven strands of hair should bring back wonderful memories, ones he should cherish. Instead, what he sees behind his lids is a blonde maiden with flowers in her unnaturally long plait of hair.  _Deceit_. Then there they are, more, dozens of them, gray now, both thick and thin,  _twisted_ , framing the face of the demon who violated his trust, his body, and his mind. He sees the damned woman who left a child, his  _daughter_ , to such a fate – trapped in this prison in the sky. He’s trapped, too, in this room he can’t forget because he never has the chance to, in this place he must call home.

So he sits Alice down every day and gingerly runs the brush through, from top to tips. She whines and moans and bellyaches as if it’s all some cruel punishment he’s elected to bestow upon an already suffering child. Perhaps someday he’ll gain the courage again, if only to make their lives that little bit easier, but for now he simply lets it all tumble freely over her shoulders and allows the routine to remain.


	9. first steps

Alice crawls. She zooms across the floor, weaving around the furniture and giggling madly when she narrowly avoids Papa’s capture. Once she gets going, there’s no stopping her. Those chubby little hands seek anything and everything, grabbing at cabinet doors, pulling out whatever she finds inside – they’re all toys, just for her: pots and pans, books, candlesticks, any number of Papa’s things. Killian caught her once with some of his jewelry and, in a bit of a panic, yanked them from her grasp so she wouldn’t put them in her mouth and choke. She’d wailed pitifully as if he had hurt more than her feelings, and it had taken quite a bit of cooing, singing, and swaying her in his arms before she quieted. Killian finds himself more exhausted trying to keep up with one wiggly baby than he has been keeping all his crewman in line for the past several centuries. He feels like a terrible father for dreading the day that she will go from moving around on all fours to walking steady on two feet.

Then Alice  _climbs_. Killian sees her playing on the rug with her stuffed bear, makes the mistake of thinking he can rest his eyes for a few seconds, and then bolts upright when a porcelain plate shatters on the floor. And there she is sitting on the kitchen counter, her tiny feet dangling off the edge, giving him a crooked grin with her four whole teeth and her fingers wrapped around a second plate, clearly ready to toss it and make the pretty noise again. The child will end his long streak of cheating death, he knows it. He just wants her to  _sit still_ and save his poor, old heart.

But then… Alice walks. He had worried over this day for months, wondered what new things she’d get into, envisioned the mischief she’d start once she could multitask – moving and grabbing and throwing their home into even more chaos than usual. But all those concerns and all the stress just melts away when he sees his daughter standing across the rug, her legs a little wobbly beneath her as she takes her first, tentative steps. She falls a few times, but with words of encouragement and Papa’s hand and hook outstretched, she eventually crosses the space between them and collapses joyfully into his arms. Of all the places her feet could carry her, her first choice was right to her Papa. There are days when he struggles, days when he wishes he had help or that his daughter wasn’t such a handful. But he remembers in moments like these that no matter how tiring fatherhood is, he wouldn’t trade it for anything.


	10. deja vu

The chess games become Rogers’ favorite part of the week, and so habitual that when Tilly doesn’t show up one afternoon, he’s instantly concerned. He drives to her humble hole-in-the-wall of an apartment. She tells him she’s fine, that she just lost track of time and forgot, but her bloodshot eyes, perpetual cough, and leaky red nose tell him otherwise. She’s ill, and alone, and though he knows she’s a young woman likely capable of caring for herself, he just can’t leave it alone. After invading her home despite her weak protests, he discovers that there are empty take-out boxes all over the place and her kitchen is barren, and she apparently doesn’t see a problem with the fact that she’s not been drinking water, only coffee, cocoa, and fizzy drinks.

Neither of them really expects the scolding he gives her. When he turns around and leaves, Tilly’s at a loss for words; which isn’t entirely inconvenient, given the way her throat scratches when she speaks. She wraps herself in a blanket and sits on her chair, wondering what just happened, and feeling a bit more sorry for herself than she did before. But then fifteen minutes later, he comes barging right back in, without even the courtesy of a knock this time. He sets a handful of shopping bags on her counter, strips off his jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and starts puttering around her kitchen like he owns the place.

Homemade chicken and vegetable soup is something Tilly can’t recall ever having tasted before. It’s delicious, but the warm feeling in her gut is less about that than the surprising joy at a friend having cared enough to make it for her. Rogers sits across from her, chin in his palm, regarding her with an odd look. But when she calls his name, the look is gone and she wonders if she wasn’t imagining it.

He doesn’t go back to work; he stays with her the whole day, making sure she stays well hydrated and fed, measuring and offering her cold medicine, monitoring her temperature. It feels strange, she thinks, having someone take care of her. And yet, somehow not so strange. Some hours are filled with casual conversation, others with long silences. Rogers buries his nose in a book from her shelf and she fades in and out of sleep while the medicine kicks in.

The odd look comes back. Tilly notices when they both have a cup of tea warming their hands, that Rogers has this little divot between his brows as if he’s seeing through her almost. They’ve never pried too much into either of their private lives, but when he asks her about her family and she tries to shrug off that she’s never had one, Rogers’ just nods as if he already knew.  _An orphan knows and orphan_ , he tells her. She almost cries into her tea. Almost.

When the next round of medicine begins to make her drowsy, Rogers takes a seat on her makeshift coffee table – an old wooden trunk that’s much sturdier than it appears – while she lies down over the couch cushions. He presses the back of his hand to her forehead, smiling gently when he says her fever’s down, and she has the strangest sense of deja vu. It feels as though it’s all happened before, down to the very look of relief in his eyes that’s there now. She doesn’t want to tell him that. Because it’s impossible for it to have happened before, and she wouldn’t want him to question her sanity – not now, especially, that she’s been diligently taking her meds.

“You all right there, love? Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Tilly shakes her head and smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She blinks slowly, tiredly. “Fine, sorry. Just... I wonder sometimes, what it’d be like. To have a family, I mean. I guess I feel like... today, with all you’ve done for me, maybe... I might have an inkling of what having a father might be like.”

She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, worried now that she’s said something weird that she can’t take back, but Rogers just lets out a breath through his nose, a stifled laugh, and she grins, relieved.

He hums and brushes hair from her forehead. It’s a tender gesture that shouldn’t feel so comfortable and familiar, but it does.

“I thought you saw Weaver as a father.” Her smile fades and Rogers instantly regrets his choice of words. Things are still a bit strained between the two since the Eloise case. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“He’s... not a bad man. He’s just...”

“I know, I understand.”

“But I don’t like it. I don’t like being used. A father... a father wouldn’t do that, would he?”

Rogers opts to spare her the tale of his own father. No use putting those thoughts in her pretty little head. Instead, he clears his throat and tells her with sincerity, “No father who deserved you would.”

He thinks he sees a sheen to her eyes, but it could just as easily be the cold, or the exhaustion, so he says nothing of it. She opens her mouth, maybe to say something, but a yawn catches her off guard and her eyelids droop.

“Will you stay?” she asks, and it sounds like a tired, helpless plea.

“Of course.”

Her battle with heavy lids is lost, and she shifts her head on the pillow. Before she can succumb to cold medicine-induced slumber, she mutters a quiet, “I wish you  _were_  my papa.”

She isn’t awake to see the way his forehead creases, or the way his eyes grow serious. He’s had an unnamable feeling itching inside all day; it’s become more insistent and tangible as the hours dragged on. He’s not sure what to make of it even now, but it’s there, and it isn’t going away.

“I wish I were, too.”


End file.
